Meditrinalia

Summary

Meditrinalia

Calendar

Roman

Date

Oct 11 Every year

Description

In Roman religion, Meditrinalia was an obscure festival celebrated on October 11 in honor of the new vintage, which was offered in libations to the gods for the first time each year. The festival may have been so called from medendo, because the Romans then began to drink new wine, which they mixed with old and which served them instead of physic.

Little information about the Meditrinalia survived from early Roman religion, although the tradition itself did. It was known to be somehow connected to Jupiter and to have been an important ceremony in early agricultural Rome, but beyond that, only speculation exists.

Meditrina was a Roman goddess who seems to have been a late Roman invention to account for the origin of Meditrinalia. The earliest account of associating the Meditrinalia with such a goddess was by 2nd century grammarian Sextus Pompeius Festus, on the basis of which she is asserted by modern sources to be the Roman goddess of health, longevity and wine, with an etymological meaning of "healer" suggested by some.